How to Win at Email Lead Generation On Any Budget

Email, the once forgotten digital medium, has been making a supreme resurgence over the last couple of years. Gone are the days where unsophisticated, and often unsolicited, bulk emails are sent out in their millions, with no desire to segment or target their recipients. Combined with increased interaction (social Media) and understanding (analytics) of your customers, email now operates as a very grown up and hugely rewarding digital exploit when used correctly.

So Is Email Such a Big Deal?

One issue that is common among those pursuing email or eCRM activities though is the struggle to get users to actually sign-up in the first place. Consumers have grown up a lot in the last few years, people are very careful about how and where they interact with brands. For some, this is more difficult than others, however one tactic that has been of particular success in my experience is incorporating an incentivised sign-up to a well thought out email welcome program.

US cross channel marketing company StrongView announced that in 2013 56% of respondents planned to increase investment in email marketing leading investment over social media (52%), mobile (43%) and search (40%)! Coupled with the continued rise of content marketing (arguably the biggest marketing buzzword of 2013, much to many people’s annoyance) many would agree that email is an essential, and unignorable marketing channel.

Maximising Your Email Potential

Based on how intelligent you are about attributing value to email marketing this can come in many forms, but assigning value to an email subscriber is the very minimum calculation that you should be making… Those embracing Universal Analytics, and particularly those lucky enough to be playing with Google Analytics Premium will have seen this feature rolled out a couple of months ago taking this to a very different level. But before I meander too far from the topic of the post, below I have scoured the web and found 5 plugins (both paid and free) that can help you:

See it in Action:

An interesting proposition that is quite different to some of the other tools on the market, in both price and in functionality. BounceExchange uses what is dubs as ‘exit intent’ technology (pictured, right) to help engage with your users based on their site usage habits. Especially if it’s for capturing potentially lost visitors (and subsequently lost budget), by offering them something to entice them to stay like a whitepaper or time-limited offer perhaps?

BounceExchange can be used for:

Email capture (lead generation)

Instant Cart Recovery

Diverting traffic to high converting ‘money’ pages

Referral

Promotional Reinforcement/Support

Increasing Social Media Following/Interaction

See it in Action:

A very new kid on the proverbial block is Danish company Sleeknote. Currently in beta, Sleeknote offers a stupidly simple and straightforward approach to integrating a lead generation layer. Whether it’s to assist with:

Running promotional campaigns and competitions

Boosting social following on:

Facebook

Twitter

Snapchat

Or directly engaging with your customers in your email campaigns, on:

MailChimp

Campaign Monitor

Sleeknote offers a similar functionality to Olark (to those that have seen/used it before), allowing users to decide where on the page that the layover is located, and also the functionality to create their own Sleeknote’s.

Hear it from the Creators:

Rather than describing the features myself, I actually got in contact with Emil, Daniel and Heine (all great guys!) and asked them if they could explain what Sleeknote offers, and answer ‘why should people choose them’? See their answer below:

What Sleeknote offers:

Sleeknote provides a slide-in product that will help you increase your customer database in your favorite marketing channel. You can choose between a number of marketing channels like Newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and many more to come. We have made Sleeknote as an intelligent slide-in product that won’t affect your conversion or bounce rate on your website.

Why people should choose it:

Our first beta-tester went from 1400 fans on facebook to more than 4500 in just two months.

Another beta tester got 325 new newsletter sign-ups in just a single week. These are absolutely incredible numbers, taking into consideration that they are all relevant customers as they already come from within your website.

What’s next for Sleeknote:

With our upcoming dashboard you can easily modify your own Sleeknote with the exact marketing channel you want to increase.

See it in Action:

Last, but by no means least is Drip offers a super simple yet seemingly very effective way on engaging with visitors to your site. Unlike some of the alternatives, Drip offers the ability to send customised emails based on users interaction with the selected opt-in layover.

It appears to be one of the easiest to set up, simply by:

Installing the code

Selecting an opt-in

Customise your email sequence

Site back and watch it take effect!

See it in Action:

Any Recommendations?

I’d love to hear back from the State of Digital readers regarding their best lead generation tactics and technology. Have you:

Experienced any of the technologies listed above?

Did you like/dislike them?

If so, why/why not?

Or, have I missed any other lead generation plugins/add-ons that you would recommend?

About Ned Poulter

Ned Poulter is CEO & Founder of Pole Star Digital, a Digital Marketing Consultancy he runs alongside a number of entrepreneurial ventures. He spends his time developing and overseeing digital strategy for a number of well reputed international clients, developing creative approaches to achieving organic search results, increasing inbound traffic, establishing and managing paid search campaigns and ultimately driving revenue.

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In a fast-changing digital environment, it is hard to keep up. Knowing what are the strategies and tactics you need to deploy to become better at your marketing is not an easy task.

State of Digital aims to help (digital) marketers from every level. Help them find their way in this changing environment. By sharing the latest strategies and tactics. By offering training. Using industry experts, State of Digital tries to help you become a better marketer.